Facets of Jain Philosophy Religion and Culture

Author(s): Shreechand Rampuriya, Ashwini Kumar, T M Dak, Anil Dutt Mishra
Publisher: Jain Vishva Bharati

Page 249

232 Anekāntavāda and Syādvāda
infinity. The universal necessity insisted upon will lead to a regressus ad infinitum and the denial of this necessity at any stage will amount to surrender of a fundamental doctrine. It may be maintained on the analogy of the final self-determined stage that reals may be self-determined. The Jaina meets the problem by taking his stand upon concrete realism. He refuses to accept the solution that experience determines the nature of things as it is without r to any determinant, external or internal. In the determination of the nature of reals the Jaina banks upon the testimony of experience, but he refuses to be a party to deliberate or undeliberate twisting of it. It is experience which envisages a real determined as existent and non-existent by its internal and external determinants respectively.If a priori considerations were depended upon in the determinati reality, there would be no check and no uniform standard. A reali be accepted to be what it is found to be in experience. The dict
Things are determined by their proofs'' cannot be denied. If the knowledge of the determinant required another determinant, we would admit its necessity. If it did not require such determinants, we would not insist upon it. If the determination of the nature of the determinant actually depends upon another determinant, that need not cause a difficulty. A thing has a nature of its own and if the determination of the nature actually requires another nature of its own and that is found in experience, the first nature will be determined. And the second nature may or may not have a third nature. What is determined by another or is determined by itself has to be discovered by experience. The matter can be explained by reference to concrete facts. The specific nature (svarūpa) of a self (jiva) is to change into mental states and this mental change assumes one form as cognitive activity. Thus cognitive activity will be its internal determinant and the subsence of cognitive activity will be its external determinant. This determinant again has its specific determinants. Thus cognition is of two kinds-mediate or nonperceptual and immediate or perceptual. The nature of immediate cognition is its lucidity (vaisadya) and that of the mediate is the lack of lucidity. Immediate or perceptual cognition has again two varieties-perfect and imperfect. Perfect perception is cognisant of the complete nature of all things and imperfect perception takes note of parts of things. It is thus a matter of experience whether a
9. vastuno hi yathaivā 'badhitapratītis tathaiva svarüpavyavasthā, manādhīnā
meyasiddhir iti vacanat. SBT, p. 34.